Yelp Holds you hostage

The most common complaints about Yelp center on its controversial sales tactics, review filtering practices, and the impact these have on small businesses. While intended to help consumers find and review local businesses, the platform's execution has led to widespread frustration from both business owners and users. 

Controversial business practices.

Extortion accusations: Many small business owners allege that Yelp salespeople have offered to remove or suppress negative reviews in exchange for purchasing advertising. In some accounts, businesses that decline to advertise see their negative reviews become more prominent and positive reviews get buried by Yelp's filter. While Yelp denies these claims, accusations have persisted for years and were documented in the film Billion Dollar Bully.

Aggressive sales tactics: Yelp is known for its high-pressure and persistent sales teams that relentlessly pursue businesses to buy ad packages. 

This is why you blew my phone up every day for 2 months straight and then started talking about friendship. It's a trust tactic. 

According to some reports filed on the better business bureau, these calls will continue even after a business owner cancels their ad subscription.

Limited control over business pages: Yelp automatically creates pages for businesses, and the business owner cannot remove or delete this page. 

Yelp claims the information is a "matter of public record and public concern". This lack of control leaves businesses vulnerable to the platform's filtering and review system, whether they want to participate or not. Fraudulently giving businesses a bad name. Pay Yelp to rectify it. 

Faulty review filtering.

Hiding positive reviews: Many businesses report that Yelp's automated filtering algorithm systematically hides legitimate, positive reviews from loyal customers while leaving negative ones prominently displayed. Yelp claims this is done to filter out fake reviews, but for business owners, it feels like their reputation is being unfairly held hostage.

Allowing fake negative reviews: The filter's perceived bias and lack of transparency can allow illegitimate and malicious negative reviews to remain visible. In some cases, a business's competitors or disgruntled former employees can create fake negative reviews to deliberately damage their reputation.

Penalizing businesses for soliciting reviews: Yelp discourages business owners from asking happy customers for reviews, claiming that these are less organic. However, critics argue this creates an unfair situation, since customers with a negative experience are already more motivated to post a review without being prompted. 

Inconsistent and toxic user behavior.

The "Yelper" mentality: The platform can attract a specific kind of user known for being entitled, overly critical, or dramatic, often leaving negative reviews for minor or misconstrued issues. This creates an environment where employees feel they must appease demanding customers for the sake of a positive review.

Irrelevant reviews: Users may post inaccurate or irrelevant information, or focus on issues outside the business's control. For example, a customer might leave a bad review because they misinterpreted a sign or had a negative experience due to a county-mandated safety requirement.

Review bombing: Businesses can suffer from organized "review bombing," where people leave negative reviews for political or other non-service-related reasons, and Yelp's response is often seen as inadequate or simply ignoring this and allowing the business to have a bad reputation while holding it hostage for payments.  

Our latest experience is from a regional Yelp manager who insisted on calling every single day for 2 months straight and when I finally got back to her she talked about being my best friend and insisted on me running an advertisement even though I said no. Rocky Curtis was insanely persistent and ignored my answer. She continued to pressure me. Then I decided to cut Yelp off because I can see through the timeshare meeting. 

Yelp is a horrible company.

Over 100 million businesses have been scammed by Yelp.

In 2019 I ran an advertisement for just shared hosting and they charged me $950 for 12 website clicks and no sales. 0 sales.

They have a bad history of holding businesses hostage for payments.